


Like home

by dashloid



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Eventual Fluff, Flashbacks, Gen, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-05-31
Packaged: 2018-04-02 05:51:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4048600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dashloid/pseuds/dashloid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An overly long one-shot about Harry's house being bequeathed to Merlin, and Merlin visiting the place for the first time since Harry's death.</p>
<p>Also Eggsy and puppies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like home

**Author's Note:**

> Could be read on its own, but is better as a companion fic for [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4001587), as the headcanons are consistent and might reference each other.
> 
> As usual, apologies for any mistakes that managed to sneak in.

_There was a lot of work for 24 hours._

_Contacting the Kingsmen that managed to survive, contacting governments (plural), making statements (very, very plural), retrieving the body, reassigning agents to deal with the aftermath, helping various services function while the world tried to find balance again, retrieving the body, studying Valentine’s system (not eliminating, studying, damn all those preserving regulations), **retrieving the body**._

_To say that Merlin rushed to Kentucky wouldn’t be true. He was chased there, like a deer running from wolves and jumping off a cliff. Forced to go there by the understanding that if he didn’t do it, then someone else would. But it had to be Merlin, after all these years, it **had to** be Merlin._

_The scene he arrived to was an even bigger mess than he remembered from Harry’s glasses’ feed._

_(The feed was an eerie memory. A gun pointed right at the camera. A shot. A fall. Then a still picture of trees in the distance. That’s what death was like, seen from the control room. Just quiet undisturbed scenery.)_

_The second wave had hit with the police and the ambulance still at the church, the yard now – a mess of bodies. Some with dark small gunshot wounds, some with syringes and scalpels stuck at odd angles, a grotesque surreal sight. Merlin had to actually dig to get to Harry, hoping till the very last moment that Harry wasn’t there._

_Then his hand found a pinstripe sleeve. A wrist. A vein._

_(Good god, Harry’s been there for how many hours? And Merlin still hoped for a pulse.)_

_Then he just sat down on the dusty ground, feeling empty and numb. It would take him a while to stand back up again._

***

When he receives the papers (a dubious process of redirecting mail from his real name and address to his house, and then to the HQ, which he almost never leaves now) Merlin sits in the leather chair, staring at the text for a while. The print is surprisingly _not_ small, and the text is surprisingly short. He has to stop himself from walking out of the room when he reads the thing. His real name, a tangle of letters, is nestled among the words. Then follows a description of a house. _The_ house.

Merlin exhales “Oh” in a tone so exasperated that it’s almost inappropriate for the situation. You don’t criticize the dead. Then he says “Oh, Harry” and the word is bittersweet in his mouth, like heather honey.

***

When he opens the door, scents rush over him, a symphony of unseen detail. Paper of books and drawings, lacquer and wood of furniture, some fabric, some cologne, all mixing together and becoming something else. _Harry Hart_. Settling on his skin, seeping into his clothes, filling his lungs. For a moment Merlin wishes he could drown in it. Then he snaps back, steps inside, and closes the door behind him. The scents shift on his tongue, like whiskey.

With that thought, he strides to the dining room on the right, finds a decanter and a glass on the table and pours himself some. Then pauses, decanter in hand, at the idea that he knows where everything is in this house, from cutlery, to books, to shirts. He could navigate it in pitch-black darkness. Which, at some point, he actually has done. He downs the drink, the giant gulp burns in his throat and echoes a dull pain somewhere behind his breastbone.

_Damn you, Harry._

He could deal with this if he was told to just retrieve the things, the numerous paintings, butterflies, collections of medals and coins, all the things Harry dragged home with him like a proof of him having a soul. Merlin’s army past made him used to uniform, but Harry struggled to feel unique, a luxury for a Kingsman, and a silly concept in itself. Like Harry wasn’t one-of-a-kind enough. Walking into his house was like walking into a museum of Harry Hart’s life, your voice got quiet and you tiptoed around every little bit of furniture. It passed with time, of course, but it’s not like people were allowed to stay long enough. Except some. Merlin considers another drink, but changes his mind and trots upstairs.

He could deal with just retrieving things, memorabilia one could put away when it got too much.

But Harry Hart left him a bloody _house_.

Merlin always imagined loss as something eating at you from within, cutting string after string, corroding and scraping.  Stepping up the stairs slowly, as if entering a dragon’s lair, he realizes that loss is going to attack him from outside. With soft whispers of Harry Hart’s memory the walls will snap close like colossal jaws.

He walks faster, past the drawings and paintings of dogs. Hounds, terriers, pointers, spaniels. Merlin has always loved dogs, but the shifting schedule and constant moving left him no possibility of getting a pet. Every time he visited Harry, he fussed over his cairn terrier so much, the dog at some point began to think Merlin was his real owner. Harry, as a running line, would take the fuzzy yapping thing from him, and say, just a tiny undertone of teasing in his voice, “Get your own.” Merlin was supposed to reply with “You know I can’t”. Harry’s replies varied. From “You work too much”, to a smile, to a hand on Merlin’s elbow, to-

Office to one side, bedroom to the other, he stops and considers where he should go first.

_“How the fuck did he think I’d live here?”_

He chooses the office, a safe option. Harry’s laptop stands on the desk, still plugged in, a shadow of a hum in the air. How many days has it stayed on? Merlin reaches to check the last document open, but stops, his fingertips almost touching the warm surface. As if something would leap out at him, claws and feathers, if he moved any further. Instead, he turns around and runs his hand over a random headline on the wall. _WE SHALL NEVER SURRENDER_. He remembers (not a fact, a process, a memory prying his mind open with a slow painful creak of rusty hinges and climbing up to the surface restlessly) Harry standing there with a box of drawing pins in one hand and a front page of The Sun in the other, turning to him and saying “Do you mind holding these?” A tiny routine line. Harry’s sleeves were rolled up, it was summer, glaring white-hot summer, and the balcony doors stood open, and the curtains danced. The papers rattled lightly with passing air, Merlin stood, holding the box, and every time Harry picked a pin their forearms and wrists touched.

_“How the fuck am I supposed to live here?”_

A noise steals in. He hears something scrape in the lock of the front door, and for a brief second thinks, irrational, pavlovian, “Harry’s home”. That’s when the tiredness and sadness finally give way to shock. The word “never” jabs somewhere between his ribs, lodges there, thin and cold, like a needle.

Merlin looks out of the window to see who’s there, but the balcony gets in the way of the view. So he walks, quietly, more out of the spy instinct than of real necessity, to the front door and opens it. Somewhere on the way, when he’s making a turn on the stairs he realizes that the drink kicked in, and _tsk_ s. It’s not the time.

Door flying open, Eggsy takes a stumbling step back, and instantly switches the look of surprise to pure puppy-like forgivable guilt.

 “What are you doing here?” he asks Merlin as if he wasn’t just trying to break into his deceased mentor’s house.

Merlin considers a few options, some of them lies, some of them just sarcasm, but finally goes with the truth. “I guess it’s mine now.”

He looks up at the high ceiling like one looks up at frescoes in a cathedral. Eggsy stands with his mouth open, silently eloquent. He’s still wearing that black and yellow hoodie of his, which makes Merlin’s heart a bit warmer: the struggle for individuality goes on.

Merlin, in a habitual gesture, takes off his glasses and rubs the bridge of his nose. “You wanted something?”

“Eh… Look, Merl-“

“If you want to take some kind of souvenir, feel free to, I don’t mind.”

“What?”

“I don’t know what to do with all of this anyway. Have you seen this place?” A pause. “You know what? I have _a lot_ of things to give away, for example-” He turns around and strides into the house, wavering just a bit at a sharp turn. After a hesitant pause, Eggsy comes in just to hear what he’s saying.

“Hey, Merl-“ he peeks into the dining room, looking for Merlin, but he’s not there. Only an empty glass glints in the middle of the table instead of an explanation. “Did he really leave you the house?”

Merlin materializes in the doorway holding a _shelf_ with Mr. Pickle on it. “At least take this thing away, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. What anyone’s supposed to do with it, to be honest.” Without waiting for an answer he just piles the shelf and the dog into Eggsy’s arms and sits down into a chair, after scraping the floorboards loudly with its legs.

“You alright?” Eggsy stands, holding the dog clumsily. Mr. Pickles gets closer and closer to falling off his little pedestal.

“Yes.”

“Uh-huh.”

Merlin gives him a quick version of the famous incinerating glare and, after noticing that he left the glass as an evidence, proceed to stare at it intently.

“Why are you here, Eggsy?”

The boy pulls the fakest of smiles and chuckles “Someone has to walk the dog, eh?” He looks at the dog’s snout as if it’s going to react to his witticism. “I dunno, I just miss him. Don’t we all?” He shrugs with sweet honesty. Then he repeats the question, stubborn little bastard. “He _really_ left you the house?”

“Mhhm,” Merlin hums a confirmation without moving. He _really_ left him the house. Think about that.

“Wh-“ Eggsy doesn’t even make it a full “why” before putting the shelf on the floor and sliding into a chair across from Merlin.

“You a smart boy, Eggsy, put two and two together.”

He’s tired. He’s just so tired, and the shock of “never” still courses through his veins, cold and slow.

Eggsy might not learn how to hide and rephrase his feelings in that posh manner that Kigsman demands, but he did learn to avoid unnecessary words. He’s doing ok.

“Were you two-” he stops.

Merlin feels his shoulders slouch involuntary at the past tense. That’s all the answer Eggsy needs. His face not really surprised, but sad, pure gentle empathic sadness.

“How long have you-” he stops again. Merlin feels thankful for every word left unsaid. Then he counts. Then he doesn’t want to say the number.

“On and off.”

“Oh.”

But then the number jumps out on its own, a burning stinging thing in his throat. “About 20 years now? I never counted before.” He looks up at Eggsy, who’s staring, paralyzed “I never counted before.” He feels like his spine is about to crack.

“I’m sorry, Merlin.”

“We are spies, Eggsy. Spies die.” You don’t count years when you’re a spy. You counts days. Hours, minutes. But not years.

“ _I know_ ,” his voice tight, Eggsy gulps loudly on saliva. His adam’s apple bobs.

Merlin knows that, of all things, Eggsy is more grown up than he looks, and much more serious than he lets on. What is worse, he realizes that with that sharp little line, he just unwittingly reminded him about his father. Instead of saying anything, Merlin looks up and nods at him, a quiet mournful nod of acknowledgement. Eggsy replies with a small appreciating smile.

“What are you gonna do now, though?”

“Uh…” Merlin sighs and gestures at the room. “Clean up, I guess?”

“And then?”

“And then sleep, work, and clean up some more.”

“Right,” understanding that he’s not getting a proper answer, Eggsy stands back up and goes to retrieve Mr. Pickle.

“Are you really taking that?”

“I’m doing you a favour,” he waddles past him towards the exit. “Know wha’? You should get a dog. It’s good for you.”

“I don’t have time.”

“Mhmm, I know. Cheers, Merlin,” he crumples through the door, hitting the frame with an edge of the shelf, more polite in his deliberate lack of involvement, than any lords and ladies Merlin encountered during his long career.

***

“What the fook is that?” Eggsy asks cheerfully, poking his head into the control room, his eyebrows raised, his smile almost cartoon-like. When Roxy told him, he almost didn’t believe, but a smug little smirk crept onto his face.

“What?” Merlin looks up from the printed map he’s been staring at and shuffling around his desk for about 20 minutes now. It would take him 10 at the most, if the edges weren’t all torn and smudged.

“That,” Eggsy points at the floor near the desk, walks to the middle of the room and squats to get a better look.

“What does it look like to you?”

“Why does it have a map in its mouth?”

“It’s _studying_ it. It’s search and rescue,” Merlin grumbles something else, reaches for the keyboard and types louder than necessary.

Eggsy makes a long snorting sound.

“Unwin, get out of my office.”

With an infectious laugh Eggsy stands up and goes to the door. A german shepherd puppy waddles after him, gaining speed, ears flailing, little paws stomping loudly.

“Oh, noooo-no-no, _Eggsy_ leaves, _you_ – stay.”

The puppy stops, hearing the familiar voice, cocks its head curiously, refocuses the short attention span, then gallops back to Merlin. He sweeps the dog up and sets on his lap, where, after trying to climb on the desk unsuccessfully, it curls up and yawns with a dull snap.

“Alright. Where was I?” Merlin turns the satellite cameras on and aligns the chewed maps. Then, without looking away, adds “Eggsy what did I say?”

Eggsy hovers in the doorway a few moments more, and leaves, a satisfied little smile still lingering on his face.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
